This thesis presents a study of the epistemological and cognitive assumptions which currently underlie knowledge acquisition for legal ontology engineering. The hypothesis is that such assumptions might have a qualitative effect on the final ontologicalterminological resources and therefore on the performance of the systems which use them. The first part of the thesis presents the state of the art in legal ontology engineering (the computational concept of ontology, a review of available legal ontologies and modelling methodologies). The second part of the thesis shows that currently knowledge acquisition in legal ontology learning is limited to very concrete legal genres, namely, legislation, case law and legal doctrine. The third part presents a case study in which two different legal genres are used for building a consumer law ontology: a traditional legal genre, Italian consumer regulation, and a Web 2.0 genre, namely an online corpus of citizens' queries regarding consumer justice. Results proof the impact of legal genre variation on the construction of the domain ontology. Thus main findings suggest that Web 2.0 corpora are a rich source for the construction of ontological resources, and at the same time these new types of ontological resources might be useful in e-government applications aimed at increasing online communication with citizens. The framework in which the study is conducted is the convergence between Web 3.0 and Web 2.0. This convergence implies the addition of one level of complexity to the main goal of the Semantic Web (or Web 3.0). Indeed, whereas Web 3.0 applied to the legal domain implies the automatic semantic interpretation of traditional legal sources (i.e. laws, judgements, administrative decisions), and Web 2.0 implies distributed models of production of knowledge by unknown users (i.e. blogs, blawgs, forums, social networks), the convergence of both implies the semantic processing of textual input produced by laymen in a distributed way. From the point of view of governance models this technical endeavour has a direct impact on the design of new e-government platforms for public service provision and citizen participation. The study has thus a twofold relevance: technical, as far as legal knowledge acquisition methodologies and legal ontology modelling are concerned; and socio-institutional, given the importance of semantic processing of laymen input for the design of new relational patterns between citizens and institutions.

Enabling information interoperability, fostering legal knowledge usability and reuse, enhancing legal information search, in short, formalizing the complexity of legal knowledge to enhance legal knowledge management are challenging tasks, for which different solutions and lines of research have been proposed. During the last decade, research and applications based on the use of legal ontologies as a technique to represent legal knowledge has raised a very interesting debate about their capacity and limitations to represent conceptual structures in the legal domain. Making conceptual legal knowledge explicit would support the development of a web of legal knowledge, improve communication, create trust and enable and support open data, e-government and e-democracy activities. Moreover, this explicit knowledge is also relevant to the formalization of software agents and the shaping of virtual institutions and multi-agent systems or environments. This book explores the use of ontologism in legal knowledge representation for semantically-enhanced legal knowledge systems or web-based applications. In it, current methodologies, tools and languages used for ontology development are revised, and the book includes an exhaustive revision of existing ontologies in the legal domain. The development of the Ontology of Professional Judicial Knowledge (OPJK) is presented as a case study.

by Roberto Cencioni At the Lisbon Summit in March 2000, European heads of state and government set a new goal for the European Union — to become the most competitive knowled- based society in the world by 2010. As part of this objective, ICT (information and communication technologies) services should become available for every citizen, and for all schools, homes and businesses. The book you have in front of you is about Semantic Web technology and law. Law is something omnipresent; all citizens — at some points in their lives — have to deal with it. In addition, law involves a large group of professionals, and is a mul- billion business world wide. Information technology is important because it that can improve citizens’ interaction with law, as well as improve legal professionals’ work environment. Legal professionals dedicate a significant amount of their time to finding, reading, analyzing and synthesizing information in order to take decisions, and prepare advice and trials, among other tasks. As part of the “Semantic-Based Knowledge and Content Systems” Strategic Objective, the European Commission is funding projects to construct technology to make the Semantic Web vision come true. 1 The articles in this book are related to two current foci of the Strategic Objective : • Knowledge acquisition and modelling, capturing knowledge from raw information and multimedia content in webs and other distributed repositories to turn poorly structured information into machi- processable knowledge.

This book contributes to an understanding of the dynamic complexities involved in the design of e-justice applications that enable online trans-border judicial proceedings in Europe. It provides answers to critical questions with practical relevance: How should online trans-border judicial proceedings be designed in order to deliver effective and timely justice to European citizens, businesses and public agencies? How can the circulation of judicial agency across Europe be facilitated? Based on extensive research, the book explores and assesses the complex entanglements between law and technology, and between national and European jurisdictions that emerge when developing even relatively simple e-services such as those supporting the European small claims procedure and European payment orders. In addition to providing a strong theoretical framework and an innovative approach to e-justice design, this book includes case studies that are based on a common methodology and theoretical framework. It presents original empirical material on the development of e-government systems in the area of European justice. Finally, it introduces the design strategies of Maximum Feasible Simplicity and Maximum Manageable Complexity and, based on them, it proposes architectural and procedural solutions to enhance the circulation of judicial agency.​

The inspiring idea of this workshop series, Artificial Intelligence Approaches to the Complexity of Legal Systems (AICOL), is to develop models of legal knowledge concerning organization, structure, and content in order to promote mutual understanding and communication between different systems and cultures. Complexity and complex systems describe recent developments in AI and law, legal theory, argumentation, the Semantic Web, and multi-agent systems. Multisystem and multilingual ontologies provide an important opportunity to integrate different trends of research in AI and law, including comparative legal studies. Complexity theory, graph theory, game theory, and any other contributions from the mathematical disciplines can help both to formalize the dynamics of legal systems and to capture relations among norms. Cognitive science can help the modeling of legal ontology by taking into account not only the formal features of law but also social behaviour, psychology, and cultural factors. This book is thus meant to support scholars in different areas of science in sharing knowledge and methodological approaches. This volume collects the contributions to the workshop's third edition, which took place as part of the 25th IVR congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, held in Frankfurt, Germany, in August 2011. This volume comprises six main parts devoted to the each of the six topics addressed in the workshop, namely: models for the legal system ethics and the regulation of ICT, legal knowledge management, legal information for open access, software agent systems in the legal domain, as well as legal language and legal ontology.

The book provides the reader with a unique source regarding the current theoretical landscape in legal ontology engineering as well as on foreseeable future trends for the definition of conceptual structures to enhance the automatic processing and retrieval of legal information in the Semantic Web framework. It will thus interest researchers in the domains of the SW, legal informatics, Artificial Intelligence and law, legal theory and legal philosophy, as well as developers of e-government applications based on the intelligent management of legal or public information to provide both back-office and front-office support.

This innovative book proposes new theories on how the legal system can be made more comprehensible, usable and empowering for people through the use of design principles. Utilising key case studies and providing real-world examples of legal innovation, the book moves beyond discussion to action. It offers a rich set of examples, demonstrating how various design methods, including information, service, product and policy design, can be leveraged within research and practice.